Aug 182012
 
Summer Reading by Hilma Wolitzer
Four Stars

Heading off to a weekend far from screens of any kind — tv, computer, cell phone, etc. — I picked up a couple of beach reads from authors I’d never tried before. Last up, Hilma Wolitzer’s Summer Reading: A Novel. I added Wolitzer’s latest book to my Amazon wish list after reading a review in the NYTimes, so I snapped up this novel because it seemed a perfect fit for my objective of finding beach reads, and am I ever glad I did! Wolitzer’s novel is set in the beach towns of the Hamptons and told from the points-of-view of three women. Angela Graves is a former English professor who retired to a small cottage in a Hamptons village and who picks up extra money by leading book groups. Lissy Snyder is the newlywed trophy wife of a megabucks corporate type whose summer home has a cutesy name and who is hostess for one of Angela’s book groups. And Michelle Cutty is a Hamptons native who works — grudgingly — as Lissy’s housekeeper and gets an earful of book talk when she serves fancy drinks and upscale snacks to the book group. The books read and discussed over the summer — which Wolitzer thoughtfully provides as a list at the end of the book — help trigger important changes for each of the three women. Angela is lonely and needs to find friends. Lissy lacks self-confidence, especially with her step-children, and needs to find strength. Michelle is drifting through her life and relationship and needs to decide what she wants out of life. Wolitzer gives each of her characters a distinct voice and attitude, and she manages to make all three very different women quite appealing. For Lissy, especially, that was a huge challenge — born rich, kinda vacuous, sort of a plaything — and Wolitzer succeeds in making her both sympathetic and interesting. Wolitzer loves her characters, which is my current favorite attribute for a novelist, and in that she reminds me of Nick Hornby and Richard Russo. However, the woman writer she most reminds me of is Elinor Lipman. What a summer treat to find a brand new writer with a nice fat backlist just waiting to be read!

Aug 152012
 
The Pact by Jodi Picoult
Two Stars

Heading off to a weekend far from screens of any kind — tv, computer, cell phone, etc. — I picked up a couple of beach reads from authors I’d never tried before. Second up, Jodi Picoult’s The Pact. Though I hadn’t read any of Picoult’s novels, I had read about her in newspaper and magazine stories. From what I gathered, her brand is built on realistic novels about contemporary families caught up in agonizing ripped-from-the-headlines problems. In this case, that problem is an apparent suicide pact between teen lovers that winds up with the girl dead, the boy on trial for murder, and the teens’ parents — once best friends — estranged. Picoult is a decent writer who provides the details needed for a sense of place in just about every scene, develops her characters with mostly believable details, creates enough suspense to keep the plot boiling, and generally moves her story along briskly. She hit only one truly off note for me early on: Why would the wife of a wealthy surgeon start a business that consists of standing in line — at the DMV, at Ticketmaster, etc. — which I figure is a bit too menial for most doctors’ wives? And why would a woman willing to do such menial work then try to pull rank — “people like us” and “can’t we pull strings” — when her son is arrested for murder? About halfway through the book, another problem arose: I didn’t buy the girl’s reason for killing herself. Part of the problem is that there isn’t clearly one thing — there’s a couple of things — but they simply didn’t mesh for me into a believable reason for suicide. However, it’s also true that teens sometimes commit suicide for unbelievably trivial reasons, so I gave Picoult the benefit of the doubt. But my big problems with this book came in the courtroom drama that ends the book. Again, Picoult’s claim to fame is realistic contemporary stories, but the courtroom scene is unadulterated BS from first to last. All jury trials start with voir dire: selection of the jurors. Not Picoult’s trial. On Day One, the jury is sitting right there ready to hear the evidence, and there is no mention of the often lengthy and always critical process of jury selection. The trial begins, correctly, with the prosecution, although having the prosecutor point to the accused in the courtroom is another piece of theatrical BS that would never happen. The first witness is the police detective but the early question — “Did you determine a cause of death?” — is crap. The autopsy, which is performed by an MD, determines the cause of death. At most, the cop can speculate about what caused the injury — stabbed, shot, strangled, etc. And then the biggie: on cross-examination, the defense attorney establishes that this case is only the second homicide the detective has ever worked on. Hooey! Homicides in small towns are investigated by experienced investigators who are overseen by experienced prosecutors in a special outfit that’s generally known as something like “major crimes unit” and is generally under the command of the state police. Picoult lives in New Hampshire and has set her story in New Hampshire. As an adult citizen of New Hampshire, she should know this. As a novelist whose brand is built on realistic contemporary stories ripped-from-the-headlines, she MUST know this. She doesn’t or she doesn’t care. Either way, the many courtroom goofs show that she can’t be trusted to get things right in her novels, so I won’t bother to ever read another.

The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand
Two Stars

Heading off to a weekend far from screens of any kind — tv, computer, cell phone, etc. — I picked up a couple of beach reads from authors I’d never tried before. First up, Elin Hilderbrand, whose The Castaways, is a sub-sub-genre of a relatively new sub-genre of beach reads: beach reads (genre) set in a beach town in the summer (sub-genre), specifically Nantucket (sub-sub-genre). Since I lived part-time on Nantucket for a while in the 1970s, I was hoping for a literary getaway back to the island. Hilderbrand uses all the right words — the Polpis Road, Tom Nevers Head, Hummock Pond — but beyond those words, there is no sense of place in the book, certainly not an island 30 miles out to sea. This is a classic case of telling — using place names — rather than showing. So the book was a let down from the start. The castaways are four couples who’ve been very close friends for a decade, socializing among themselves almost exclusively and traveling together for adults-only getaways to Las Vegas, Stowe, London, etc. The story kicks off with the deaths of the youngest couple, Tess and Greg, whose marriage has been rocked by emphatically denied allegations of his infidelity and whose sailing trip on their 12th anniversary ends with both drowned. As the news is filtering through to the surviving castaways, including Ed, the Nantucket police chief, who will identify the bodies, Hilderbrand gives us this: “They were covered with orange tarps down in the basement of the Coast Guard station, where it was cool. After the Chief identified them, they would be picked up by the funeral home.” Uh, no. The official response to violent death — whether by accident, homicide, or suicide — doesn’t work that way. The way it works is that the bodies would be zipped into bags and kept in the morgue at the local hospital until the post-mortem was complete, after which they would be picked up by the funeral home. Hilderbrand may not be writing a police procedural, but getting the details right is one of the basic jobs of any novelist who purports to be writing realistic contemporary fiction. Getting it right takes a phone call. Since Hilderbrand can’t be bothered to get that right, why should we trust her to get anything else right? And she doesn’t. She tells us that Ed the police chief is a good and honest cop, but what she shows us tells a very different story. His reaction to trauma on the victims that could indicate foul play? He keeps it secret and doesn’t investigate. His reaction to a toxicology report showing that dead Tess was high on heroin-type drug? He keeps it secret and doesn’t investigate. His reaction to the theft of her cell phone from the bag of personal possessions turned over by the Coast Guard? He keeps it secret and doesn’t investigate. His reaction to the string of early morning phone calls from one of the surviving male castaways to the dead woman on the day of her death? He keeps it secret and doesn’t investigate. A real cop would investigate the deaths — is, in fact, sworn to do so by his oath of office — and, if he felt too close to the victims to fulfill that obligation, would turn the case over to someone who could do the job. Real novelists sweat the little details and the big details, and making sure your noble police chief acts like a real cop is a pretty big detail. Hilderbrand can’t be bothered with getting details right, and in that she reminds me of the writers of made-for-TV movies, who just make stuff up when they run into a question. Q. What would the Coast Guard do with the bodies? A. I dunno. Gotta keep ’em cool. Let’s have ’em put them in the basement. The Castaways feels like a not very good made-for-TV movie. There’s a bunch of high drama BS, including drinking and drugs, infidelity, shady business deals, nervous breakdowns, and God knows what else, but everything ends up happily-ever-after for the surviving castaways. Hilderbrand doesn’t sweat the details, and if you don’t either, this might be an okay read for you.